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When Silvia came home later that night, she was relieved to find that Frank seemed to be in a descent mood, for tonight she had planned on getting him to commit to the reunion dinner. She went into the kitchen where he was busily cooking, sat down at the table, and tried to think of something to say in an effort to make conversation. She was treading new ground by attempting to make conversation with her father. She couldn’t remember ever having a conversation with him. Her words always seemed to bounce off of him when she talked to him, and when he talked to her or anyone else, he spoke in monologues and left no space for interaction.
As she watched him move from one side to another side of the room, she realized for the first time in her life, just how closely he had resembled his mother. She used to shuffle around in the same restless, wasteful manner. Silvia usually thought of genetics as something that only influences a person’s physical traits. She rarely thought of it as influencing something like the way a person moves through the world. She wondered if he had been this way as a boy, but she couldn’t imagine a young boy scrambling about in this manner. She remembered she once heard about people becoming like their parents as they age. She then wondered if she would become more like Frank as she grew older. She hoped that she might become a hard worker or able to wake up early without an alarm clock like Frank. She didn’t want to grow into a little old lady shuffling about in her kitchen. She visualized this for few seconds and shook herself out of the nightmarish fantasy by sitting up straight and forcing herself to ask Frank about what he was cooking.
“Sausage and peppers,” he replied skeptically, probably because he was wondering why his daughter had a sudden interest his cooking. Silvia looked over to the side of the stove to see some stale looking rolls sitting in a plastic bag that looked as if it might have been re-used several times already.
“Where did you buy the rolls, Dad?”
He looked at her with squinted confused eyes and said, “Why do you care?”
“I’m just making conversation,” she said, going over to look at the rolls like she was actually interested in them.
Frank looked back at her like he seemed to appreciate her attempt at conversing with him, as most people stayed away, and he said, “I got them at Scaffidi’s,” with a slightly less suspicious tone in his voice.
“Oh, isn’t that near the Central Cafe?”
“Yeah,” said Frank, suspiciousness coming back into his voice.
“That’s a really nice little place, huh?”
“I suppose.”
“I was thinking we could have a nice dinner there after Vince’s graduation.” She was ever so vigilant about her wording and her manner of speaking.
“Oh jeez, are you still on that?” He took a second away from his cooking to wave his arm in the air.
“Yeah, I’m still on that.” She was careful not to be defensive, even though she felt a strong urge to be.
“Well, you should stop wasting your time worrying about Vince. He’s not worrying about you.”
Silvia decided to ignore her father’s attempt to cultivate bad feelings between her and Vince and persisted on with the one argument that was bound to compel Frank.
“It would mean a lot to Mom, you know.”
“How do you know?” He turned completely away from his cooking and looked directly at his daughter.
“She suggested it to me.” Silvia wanted him to know that it was Donna who suggested the party, but of course, she would never conceal the fact that, although her mother suggested it, she had recently become resistant to having any kind of occasion that involved her being in the same room as Frank. The look on his face turned from one of indifference to one of curiosity, and just as he was looking like he might be willing to reason with Silvia, the smell of burning meat came from the frying pan, and he was forced to turn his attention back to the sausages. He turned down the flame and diligently began turning the sausages over in the pan. Silvia was untouched by his sense of alarm of possibly burning his food and she waited patiently until he was finished doing what he was doing to continue.
“Like I was saying, Mom was the person who suggested it to me. She wanted to do something for Vince’s graduation and thought that having all the family gather for a nice dinner would be a really great way to commemorate the occasion.”
Another thought popped into her head, as she saw the look of interest coming through her father’s eyes. Maybe he suspected that Donna wanted to get back together with him and that her suggesting a gathering, where the two of them would be present, was her way of trying to achieve this goal. As the egotist he was, Frank might believe that Donna’s desire for the gathering had nothing to do with doing something nice for her son, but that her intentions were to get reunited with the wonderful man she had so hastily and thoughtlessly left.
“I thought she never wanted to see me again,” he said raising one of his eyebrows as though he was cracking a murder mystery. “Now all of a sudden she wants to see me?”
“Maybe she’s having a change of heart,” said Silvia, with all the deception and manipulation she could muster up in one sentence.
“Yeah, maybe she is,” he said in a self-congratulatory tone of voice. He put some sausages and peppers into a roll and grabbed a can of beer from the refrigerator.
Silvia let her father take a moment to enjoy his imagined achievement before getting back to her cause. “Well, I was thinking that the Central Cafe would be perfect for the occasion, Dad,” she said with a hopeful smile. “What do you think?” She knew how much he loved it when anyone, especially his children, requested his advice or opinion, as they did so very infrequently.
“I suppose,” he said, shoving some of a sandwich in his mouth. As he opened his can of beer and took a sip equivalent to about half of the can, she thought of saying something to stop him from drinking the beer. It would lead to another, followed by another, followed by another, and so on and so on, until he was throwing his guts up in the bathroom, passing out on the den floor or fighting with her and Vince. She wanted to say something to stop this cycle, but she couldn’t risk annoying him, given her current agenda, so she kept her mouth shut. Still, he must have felt her disapproval because he walked into the den with his beer and sandwich, and in doing so, broke his own rule of eating outside of the kitchen.
She didn’t intend to seem disapproving of him. In fact, she had grown less judgmental of him recently, replacing her judging feelings for those of sympathy. She had a dream last week of a baby boy crying out in the night for his mother, who, for some mysterious dream reason, couldn’t be there for him. It didn’t take her long after waking to figure out that the little boy was her father. Most of her dreams were forgotten by the time she got out of her bed, but this one stayed with her all day, with the image playing over and over in her mind. She wanted to feel angry with her Grandma Greco for being such a lousy mother to her father and most likely the primary impetus for his drinking, which in turn, made him be a lousy father. She wanted someone to blame. But then she thought of how she had just talked to Cosmo about how he should stop blaming Frank for his problems. She had to practice what she preached or she would be a hypocrite. Besides, maybe Frank’s mother, like him, did the best she could.
Silvia walked into the room in which her father was sitting in front of the television, switching channels while he ate the rest of his dinner. The volume was turned up too high, as it always was when he watched TV, and Silvia felt challenged by having to talk over it, but she had no choice. She really needed to get a commitment for the reunion dinner from him tonight as Vince was graduating in a few days.
“So, should I make the reservations, then?” she asked.
“Huh?” he said like he was completely unaware of anything she had said during the past half hour.
“Should I make reservations at The Central Café for dinner for all of us for Saturday night?”
This time he pretended that he didn’t hear her and just continue
d eating and switching channels. So then she used something that she had been saving for just such an occasion: The fact that his favorite child, Angie, would come to the gathering with Doug, who Frank had been uncomfortable around since he had made the drunk toast at their wedding. If he were able to make a nice presentation at the restaurant and get through the dinner without making a drunken fool out of himself, it would be a great opportunity for him to redeem himself in his son-in-laws eyes.
“I can call now to make the reservations for the seven of us and one baby,” she said so tactfully.
“Seven?” he put the remote down, and looked at his daughter. “What do you mean seven plus a baby? Angie’s coming?” He got a glimmer of light in his face.
“Yeah,” Silvia said, feeling a great sense of accomplishment for getting his undivided attention. “She’s really looking forward to it too.” Frank didn’t know Angie well enough to know that she couldn’t possibly be looking forward to this event. He wasn’t even aware of the conflict between Angie and Cosmo that had been going on since they were children. He would probably be happy to know of the existence of this conflict. He might even pat himself on the back for being partially responsible for them not liking each other. He had, after all, played a crucial part in the separation of his two children by making her his favorite and him the black sheep.
“She’s coming with Doug?” He asked, as if he didn’t already know the answer to this question.
“And Isabella,” Silvia said, nodding her head.
Frank looked onto the floor for a few seconds and then at Silvia. She assumed that he was thinking that this dinner was a good idea after all, but there was still one thing nagging at him.
“You know who’s going to have to pay for the whole thing? Don’t you?” Frank didn’t seem as angry as she thought he would be. She figured that the combination of seeing Donna and Angie with having an opportunity to look good in his son-in-law’s eyes was more important than the price of dinner.
“Well yeah, Dad, but think of how good you will look in everyone’s eyes.” And when she said everyone, she was really only referring to Donna, Doug and Angie.
“That’s true,” he said, with an expression on his face like he was trying to visualize how everyone would be responding so graciously to his act of generosity. And suddenly a look of concern came into his eyes, and he said, “How will everyone be sure that I paid for the whole thing? I want some kind of public recognition.” He said this like a little boy demanding a treat from his mother for his good behavior. But Silvia was prepared for this question.
“I’ll say something in a toast I make for Vince. I’ll give a special thanks to you for your generosity, so everyone will know.”
Frank seemed satisfied with this agreement and told her to make the reservation. After she made her call, she was surprised to find herself going back into the den to sit in front of the television with Frank. She would normally retreat to her room and paint, write emails or plan her move to Portland. But she felt something inside that directed her back towards the den as if, maybe, for the first time in her life, she wanted her father’s company.
“What now?” he said to her as if her re-entrance into the room was purely opportunistic.
“Nothing. I just thought I’d watch TV with you.” When he realized that she didn’t want anything from him, he asked her if there was anything special she wanted to watch. Her mind went blank. She rarely watched television and so she was unfamiliar with the current programming. She imagined that most every channel was showing some terrible reality show.
“Oh, whatever,” she said. She was glad when he turned on a nature channel that was showing a documentary on giraffes. As long as she could remember, he liked watching nature and animal shows, and Silvia liked this particular aspect of her father.
He began looking around the room like he was uncomfortable and then blurted out, “I got the worst sweet tooth. Damn, I wish I’d stopped for some ice cream. They have Breyers on sale at the ACME. Wish I had some now.”
Silvia knew that he was fishing for an offer for her to go get some ice cream, so she told him that she would go and pick some up. At that, Frank’s face brightened and he made a special request for mint chocolate chip. “If they don’t have that, get chocolate fudge. If they don’t have that, just plain chocolate.” She said okay, walked out of the room, and was almost out of the back door when she heard him say, “If they don’t have any of those flavors, just call me.”
“Righto,” she said, and hurried out of the door.
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